A security firm has warned that China's social security system has loopholes that put millions of people's personal information at risk. (Photo : Reuters)
The 10 worst passwords of 2014 have been revealed by the annual list of the security services company SplashData derived from a data of 3.3 million leaked passwords in North America and Europe.
As revealed on a Facebook post, SplashData revealed that netizens using "123456" and "password" as their password are those who are most prone to being hacked as these are the first and second most commonly used password both in 2013 and in 2014 respectively.
In the 2013 list of worst passwords, "12345678" was at number three followed by "qwerty" at number four, "abc123"at number five, "123456789" at number six, "111111" at number seven, "1234567" at number eight and "iloveyou" at number nine and "adobe123" at number 10.
In 2014, "12345" is at number three followed by "12345678" at number four, "qwerty" at number five," "1234567890" at number six, "1234" at number seven, "baseball" at number eight, "dragon" at number nine and "football" at number 10.
Other passwords commonly used in 2014 are numbers with patterns such as "1234567" and "696969"; the alphanumeric pattern "abc123"; the animals "monkey" and "mustang"; password related words and sentences "access," "letmein" and "trustno1"; the nouns "shadow," "master"; the male name "michael"; and superheroes "superman" and "batman."
According to SplashData CEO Morgan Slain, passwords based on simple patterns on the keyboard are still popular despite how weak they are and netizens should avoid using passwords using numbers alone, especially sequences, PRWeb reported.
As more websites require stronger passwords or combinations of letters and numbers, longer keyboard patterns are becoming common passwords, and they are still not secure," Slain explained.
